The Warehouse
by GlassBomb
Summary: 'Death is always around the corner, but often our society gives it inordinate help.' The team face death, life and everything in between. Advanced tissue warning. UPDATED - finally!
1. Chapter 1

_**A/N: I know some of you were expecting humour and delight in Mishaptitude, but alas, this bloody thing just wouldn't leave me alone! It snuck into my mind during a particularly dull evening, and although I never consider killing anyone (honestly, I don't! xD), it was a plot bunny that simply wouldn't be ignored. If you think I'm all about light, happiness and sprinkles and that's what you're expecting of this, you should probably click that little red 'x' in the corner right now. Just warning ya! =D Lol. Read and review please, and if you like it (in a manner of speaking), I shall add the thoughts of the other three. Loooove you all! =D xxx**_

_You are your own Devil, you are your own God_

_You fashioned the paths your footsteps have trod._

_And no one can save you from Error or Sin_

_Until you have hark'd to the Spirit within._

Tieme Ranipiri (Or 'My Law'), Ancient Maori poem

It's almost funny, Gerry Standing thinks without a trace of humour, that despite being thrice a father and husband, once a grandpa and many times over a treasured friend, that the only person he can concentrate on in the face of certain death is his boss. UCOS are kneeling, hands above their heads, before a dusty brickwork panel on the rotting floor of a disused warehouse, and the scene is perversely poetic; the Met's final representation of the old school, having their collective consciousness extinguished in one of London's many forgotten relics.

_Christ._

He's about to _die. _He's been in this situation before, of course; they all have, growing as officers on a diet of rebellion, murder, rape, drug trafficking, kidnap, undercover operations and god only knew what else – but it's never been so hopeless. Every single other time, his colleagues have known his location, or there's been a paper trail that could discover his whereabouts, or there've been a indeterminate quantity of armed bastards just outside the door; here, there's nothing. No one has a clue where they are, and even if they did, they're all sufficiently incapable of confirming it.

It's a curious thing, he notes, to be stripped of hope; it's unfamiliar in the worse possible way. Every tale, from _Pandora's Box_ through to _Shrek_ has a core of warmth, of faith in rescue or human nature or the fact that things can improve.

Things can't improve here; things – _them_ – can only be rendered lifeless, and the acknowledgement that no one's coming to save them is like something from one's worst nightmare; the stuff of unbridled terror, the kind of thing that set every cell in one's being quivering... a desperate, screaming, awful fear of the inevitable and the unknown. It was precisely the sort of thing that he'd so fervently promised his significantly younger children would never occur; that even if everything seemed lost, it wasn't.

Only, this time it was, and in death, clearly he was not only powerless, but also a bloody _liar_.

A sob slices through his anguish, and his eyes flicker to the woman that's invading his head in all her ballsy brilliance; a shock of blonde hair falls from her face a moment, and tears line her cheeks.

Dear god.

All really _is_ lost if Sandra Pullman's allowing herself to cry. His peripheral vision vaguely notes that Brian, who is to the far right, and Jack, who is directly beside her, have also noticed their oblivious boss's pain, yet he doubts that it's affecting them quite the way it is him.

She doesn't deserve this. Hell, none of them do, but she's a vibrant _tour de force,_ a tornado of energy, dedication and spirit with so much more life to lead than the rest of them; a stunning, solitary Ice Queen with a core of the hottest flame, simply waiting to be swept up and away to an exotic paradise where she's her own princess, where her heart can rule and her head can go to hell – where work means nothing compared to her personal life, where she can be entirely her beautiful, emotional, perfect self and drop the moody bitch act.

He realises far too late that the biggest regret of his life is that he's never going to get to be that Prince Charming that she so desires.

Their captors are sneering at them from somewhere above; laughing, jeering, mocking, sarcastically lamenting the loss of the old ways and genuinely welcoming a world of gangland culture, of deceit and drugs and worthless death, but he's hardly listening; he doesn't want to give them the satisfaction, and nor can he hear anything other than Sandra's desperate sobs and the unceremonious splitting of his own heart.

He hears loud and clear, however, when a pistol is cocked against his forehead, and his breath hitches. They're still taking the piss, the fucking bastards, and a flicker of his gaze to the right confirms his worst fear – that all four of them are being subjected to the same fate. His eyes fall closed and his respiration turns rapid, erratic, as regrets and people and unfulfilled desires stalk through his mind, and he can't help but wonder if this is the infamous 'life flashing before your eyes' sequence; he sees all three of his children from birth to adulthood in hyperspeed, their giggles and cuddles and dresses and first boyfriends interspersed with images of Emily, the woman he'd shared none of that with, but had grown to love almost as much. Gerry Junior climbs a slide and squeals in delight at the descent, and the scene melts as quickly as it came as the memory twists into the first time he held him in hospital...

The ex-wives flicker across his cerebral cortex, in their beauty and bravado; Jane in a wedding dress, downing champagne like it's going out of fashion, Carol sporting the world's most ridiculous and extroverted beehive...

He recalls his friends, his colleagues, his first day at UCOS; the thrill, the unshakeable feeling of returning home after an extended hiatus – the lunches out, the rapists, the cigarette breaks, the drug barons, the murderers, the dinners, pasta night, the frustrating yet divine feeling of mental taxation, of not quite knowing where to go but acknowledging that you're right on the edge of a breakthrough... he thinks of Jack, the most loyal, witty, charming soul he's ever come across, and of Brian; an eccentric, an outcast, who had found a home with a trio of rejects in the basement of the Met – a genius and a warm-hearted individual, desperate to be liked and eternally glad to finally be so. He contemplates momentarily what they must been thinking; of chances wasted, of wives they'll never see again or are about to be reunited with forever, of a son that'll never quite know how loved he is, of alcohol, of the good ol' days...

But mostly, he thinks of Sandra; of her voice, of her megawatt smile, of her gentle teasing; of her flirting, of her ingenuity, of her figure and fashion sense and truly rare appreciation of cuisine and its accompanying wines... of how much he loves her, how much he's always bloody loved her, and how much he detests himself somewhere deep within for never inviting her to a restaurant without their workmates.

A hand insistently clasps at his, and he finds Sandra staring at him urgently, crying silently, her gaze an inaudible vow; _I'm so sorry I've led us here, I'm so sorry that I've left your kids without a father, I'm so sorry that I never responded to your advances, always instead wound you up... I'm so sorry that we never got a chance._

Her shimmering eyes promise the world, and he clings like a koala to the moral fibre that whatever afterlife they end up in – if there even bloody well is one – they'll face it together, perhaps as more than close friends.

He emits a choking gasp of his own as the nanoseconds tick by, the world frozen in a perpetual mist of terror as he waits, bizarrely impatient, for his own end and for the end of his friends, and he hopes against all hope that even when all hope's gone, the fact that he's always thought of religion as a load of bollocks isn't going to affect his eternity; he's a good bloke, surely it won't matter?

And of everything he has to be thankful for, amongst the innumerate number is pride; he IS a good bloke. He's a soft-hearted enigma through and through, and if that isn't enough to earn entrance to a Nirvana of Sandra, virgins, tobacco and the finest whiskey, then what the hell is?

Gerry Standing's final thought on planet Earth is of a terrified peace – that this is happening, but that his legacy will remain, and a swirl of noise, memories, women and mates that have been his life don't in any way make his end fitting, but that it could have been a hell of a lot worse.

He glances at Sandra, his gaze deep, and whispers his adoration as the promised bullet rips through his skull and he collapses to a fall he's never going to feel the impact of.


	2. Jack

**Hello, dears. Remember me? XD Thought, you know, as it's been a while, I'd give you another chapter of this delicious angst-fest – I can only once again apologise for my ridiculously busy life, and hope this makes up for it at least a little. 3 This is Jack's section, as you're about to read, and was oddly difficult to write – although Jack's arguably my favourite character from NT, I find him easily the most tricky to give a voice to, so I've done my best.**

**I PROMISE I'll update you with Gerry and Brian soon... although you might, considering the gap between chapters, want to re-read the last one to update you on the premise of this fic – one warehouse, one cold-case unit, four killers, four collections of final thoughts.**

**Reviews make the world spin – and I love you ALL. Lol xx**

**NT-NT-NT-NT-NT-NT-NT-NT-NT-NT-NT**

It's the most perverse form of irony, Jack Halford realises with disgust, that the man who has contemplated suicide more times than his sanity cares to recall has reached the climax of his existence and learnt that more than nearly anything, all he wants is to bloody well _live._

The acknowledgement chokes him far more harshly than his daily beta-blocker, and burns with a far greater intensity than the whiskey he traditionally and inadvisably swallows it with.

Ignoring the individual instances, he's thought of a thousand ways to end it all over the past decade – one of his kitchen knives had been the initial choice, not long before Sandra had recruited him as her UCOS deputy, during a particularly poignant episode of _The Good Life _and a one-pot casserole. Since, his mind, ever a treacherous quarry of imagination, has conjured up a lethal myriad – downing his drain cleaner, popping his entire prescription in a single sitting, hanging himself with one of his more garish ties, freefalling from the top of a multi-storey car park, jumping into the path of a bus (extra kudos for any instances of gridlock caused, he'd coldly thought at the time), diving onto a railway track at rush hour, nonchalantly dropping a toaster into his bubble bath, strolling through several of the capital's more unsavoury areas in the dead of night... even shooting himself. He's never possessed a firearm independently of the Met, but he hasn't gotten where he is today without knowing a reliable dozen or so crooks he could acquire one from.

_Where he is today..._

A bubble of hysterically bitter laughter pops soundlessly in his oesophagus as his peripheral vision notes his heavily breathing colleagues. He can only take an educated guess as to what they're thinking – regrets, marriages, children, alcohol, opportunities, squandered and taken alike – but far more than he hates his own inevitable fate, he abhors how they're sharing it.

All three of them are blissfully unaware of it, but in their own ways, they've each reminded him hundreds of times why life is precious – why his own matters so much when it seems to mean nothing. Whenever memories of Mary and their associated grief crush him, he recalls Gerry's latest disastrous relationship and laughs himself to tears; the recollection of Sandra proudly kneeing a tenacious suspect in a particularly sensitive area has him grinning for hours; the reminiscence of Brian genuinely mystified as to why a gift-less Esther seemed annoyed on February the fourteenth creases him up. It's far from just their hilarity that's renewed his faith in existence, however – it's every time they ask his opinion, buy him a pint, invite him to dinner, enquire as to his wellbeing if he seems on the low side, include him in every activity – they and their job give him the greatest form of purpose.

For the first year and a half of being widowed, his cowardice was the only thing that kept him alive during his darkest hours; for the past eight and a half, it's been these three people, in all their messed-up, endearing, intuitive glory, and it's devastating to know that the trio he loves and appreciates more than any of them could ever possibly realise will meet their destiny in the same despicably pointless way. He shares no blood with any of them, but they are more his family than anyone genetics could have plausibly linked him with – his younger brothers, the nerd and the charmer, and his daughter, the one he has spent so many years guiding to become the exceptional, headstrong individual she is now. She's crying, he can hear, and the sound burns his ears like magma; no one should be able to reduce Sandra Pullman to tears. She is pure energy, a stunning blonde _tour de force_ of strength, intuition and courage. He has seen her slam suspects twice her size and age into brick walls and hold them at gunpoint until back-up arrives through sheer determination, has watched her recover from heartbreak more times than he's been capable of keeping track of, has laughed as she's punched numerous colleagues for their sexist, underhand comments in her general direction... all that joy, power, control, and right at the end, she's left to face death as a sobbing mess. It physically nauseates him, and his stomach churns with livid disgust.

Gerry, too, his peripheral vision notes, is horrified by it – the Cockney who has never found the happiness his nymphomaniacal tendencies have always craved has found it, he knows for certain, in this woman that's transformed all their lives. He hadn't become a Chief Superintendent without noting the spark between the pair – it isn't and never has been his place to point it out, but him and Brian have shared many a snigger over it.

_Brian..._

The former inspector is his kindred spirit in many senses; as lonely, screwed up and lost as he is, full of such bitter regret that he wonders how the hell the man manages to keep it all in sometimes – he can be annoying, troubled and even downright bizarre, but he has never encountered such an instinctual genius, and one with such passion and concern for those close to him. Brian Lane practically breathes policing, and it stabs him somewhere deep down, because he knows that all his friend will be contemplating in his final moments is how useless he's been as a husband and father; the last conscious thoughts from the mind of the cleverest, most determined man Jack has ever met will be a desperate, awful desire to change what he never can – the past.

And there's Gerry – doubtlessly, he will be cursing himself for not being brave enough to admit his feelings to Sandra, as he knows she will be too, but he arguably has the most to lose. He's saved Jack more than anyone – his antics, his banter, his passion for life have rejuvenated the old soul more than anything, and it kills him to acknowledge that the daughters and grandson he adores so deeply will be left half-orphaned.

Their captors are spitting out urbane venom of ridding the old and replacing it with the new, and for the first time, he thinks of Mary – his wife, the woman he has spent the last decade missing so powerfully that it's ripped him to shreds and reduced him to tears a thousand times over – _christ_, he hopes he ends up with her. He's spent his working life in pursuit of justice, has jailed hundreds of criminals, has found and convicted her killer – he's not a self-important man, but it's surely it's his destiny, the final justice, that he gets his eternity with his soulmate?

It's his last hope – a fitting one, he thinks. His life has been worthy of that, if nothing else.

There's a gun barrel against his forehead, and although he burns with the desire to scream that his friends should be saved, he understands the futility, stays silent and keeps his eyes resolutely open – he will not plead with these undeserving bastards, won't allow them the power of his fear by not facing his demise head-on.

His murderer, unsurprisingly, doesn't meet his strong gaze as he pulls the trigger, but neither does he cause the distinct pressure Jack feels from an ethereal hand as his life is extinguished – that honour belongs to one person alone, and he knows none of them are dying with him tonight.


End file.
